I have been interested in drawing comics for a long time. But I have never been able to do a long-form piece like a comic book, My comics have always been more like newspaper comic strips or sunday funnies style one or two pagers. For me at least, the story has always been the challenge.
Victor Giannini commented on one of my comics and pointed us to his project. The web samples of Skatefast Dyephun originally seemed crude and juvenile to me. Kind of reminded me of this. The website had a couple of problems too but after I read through the sample pages I found the project crude and juvenile but in a really compelling way.
I wasn’t sure what I’d be getting if I ordered the thing for $10 – but it can be expensive to print something in small quantities. $10 seemed a lot for an amateur comic book but since a regular superhero comic will run you about three dollars these days, maybe that wasn’t so bad for an independent production. Turns out your ten bucks gets you about 200 pages encompassing 6 issues – black and white art, but nicely produced on-demand by an outfit called Comixpress. Victor isn’t thrilled with those guys and would love to find a publisher, (sounds like CafePress – a great way to get a few produced but hard to actually make money from it). Anyway it’s good value for money.
And the story has everything: fantastic skateboarding situations, skate punks vs. skinheads, romance, warring ninja clans, cussing, dismemberment, cop-killers, teenagers mouthing off to their teachers and cutting out of summer school and oh, yeah, zombies! Reminds me a little of Mofo’s Wild Riders of Boardz illustrated stories in Thrasher Magazine back in the eighties. Volume 1 takes you pretty deep into the story before leaving you with a cliffhanger. Do you remember when you thought about skateboarding like an adventure?
You have to admire Victor, who is 23 years-old and has been skating for six years, for his DIY spirit and for producing this chunk of work. There are some art and layout weaknesses but I enjoyed the book because the story keeps it going. Volume 2 will conclude the story and comes out next year. The website shows a cover from issue 7 so he’s working on it.
7 comments
Pete
If you skate, you’ll find a part of yourself in this book. It’s hardcore, fun and clever. Buy it or you’ll hate yourself forever – it’s that good!
Kilwag (k.ed)
For some reason I also enjoyed reading the origin of Boardlord’s sunglasses. That was a nice touch.
Etrain
This comic rocked my socks, I highly recommend you check it out.
H-street
Skaeighfast Dyephun is one of the coolest things that has happened in skateboarding over the past 7 years. Victor vision is that of a world that is going to hell and skateboarders with their radical thrashing are the only one’s though enough to save it. The black and white lines express what words can’t, that feeling you get when you land a sick trick.
Kilwag (k.ed)
I like that one of the main characters looks like he’s from The Briefs. The Briefs rule.
Danny
Victor Giannini is my favorite artist below the age of 25. Sans-age-limits.. Maybe Michael Showalter..
paige
There’s a comic book out called Pirates of Coney Island. It isn’t exclusively about skating, but it’s pretty cool anyway.